The vital signs of the 30-year-old COVID-19 victim were crashing, and Kearny County Hospital in rural Lakin, Kansas, just wasn’t equipped to handle the case.
Miller, Kearny’s chief medical officer - who doubles as the county health officer - called around to larger hospitals in search of an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) bed. With coronavirus cases soaring throughout Kansas, he said, he couldn’t find a single one.
After pounding big U.S. cities in the spring, COVID-19 now has engulfed rural and small-town America, seeming to seep into the country’s every nook and cranny.
According to Reuters’ interviews with more than a dozen medical care providers and public health officials in the nation’s heartland, many hospitals are severely lacking in beds, equipment and - most critically - clinical staff, including specialists and nurses.
COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are spiking nationally. But the Midwest - encompassing a dozen states between Ohio and the Dakotas - has been especially brutalized.
Reported case rates are more than double that of any other region in the United States, according to the COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run data provider. From mid-June to mid-November, reported cases in the Midwest rose more than twentyfold.
For the week ending November 19, North Dakota reported an average of 1,769 daily new cases per 1 million residents, according to the tracking project.
South Dakota recorded nearly 1,500 per million residents, Wisconsin and Nebraska around 1,200, and Kansas nearly 1,000.
Even in New York’s worst week in April - with business closed and panic gripping the public - the state never averaged more than 500 new cases per million people. California never topped 253.
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